The Girl on the Bus
by rosesforwriting
Summary: He met her on the bus. It wasn't exactly romantic; none of it was. But that's where he met the love of his life- on the run down public bus on the way to school. And it didn't matter what circumstances landed him on that bus, because he wouldn't have it any other way. Clace, AH. Fluffy oneshot.


A/N: Fluff filled Clace short, multi chapter has me stumped but I thought I would publish this one shot. Enjoy!

The Girl on the Bus

He met her on the bus.

He was fourteen and his mother had just passed away- he wasn't getting along with his step father, so he took the long bus ride to school instead of sitting awkwardly in a car with a man he didn't like.

He stepped on, flashing his bus pass before clambering to the back. It wasn't usually busy in this part of town, and he was the only one getting on. There were only a few other people on the bus, and the doors were just about to close as a flash of red burst through. He craned his neck around, unsure of what he saw, and watched as a tiny red haired girl began to pay for a ticket.

She was so small, so pale, but she moved along confidently to near the back of the bus. He stared, entranced as her green eyes swept over him.

They barely saw him.

After that day he realised that they went to the same school; she was a year below him and he never even knew that she existed, despite the fact that the school was tiny, only a few hundred students.

It wasn't until the next year, just after he turned fifteen, that he first talked to her. She walked on the bus, her head less high than the year before, and she walked toward the back of the bus- only to be tripped up by a group of snickering boys in her year. She fell hard, hands hitting the ground with a slap and Jace flinched. It reminded him of how he had hit the ground the first time he had been hit by his step father.

Before he knew it he was on his feet, moving toward her with conviction. The boys stopped laughing as he shot them a sharp look, and he bent down to offer her a hand; she stared at the ground the entire time as he pulled her up. Her chin was bleeding, but Jace knew better than to touch it. He held her arm as she stumbled to a seat, and leant down quickly to scan her face.

"Are you okay?" He'd whispered, voice low and blank. She had just nodded, turning her face away from him. He stood back up and walked back to his seat, eyes still fixed on her. Her hair was longer.

After that encounter the girl would often watch him on the bus- he noticed her, every time, and sometimes he would purposely look over to make her blush. Sometimes she would smile at him, soft lips turned up to him, but he wouldn't smile back.

He started looking out for her at school; he spotted her in the cafeteria, not eating, just sitting alone at a table, scribbling in a sketchbook. Alec had distracted him with something stupid, and he didn't look back.

They always got off at the same stop, her first and him following. She dropped her keys once, and he handed them back, smiling stiffly at the soft thank you. Sometimes they fell into step beside each other, but that was okay because they went off in different paths. It wasn't like they were friends- he didn't have to worry about hurting her.

Months later, as he climbed onto the bus to return home, he noticed for the first time the girl talking to someone else. Her eyes were brighter, animated as she chatted to a boy beside her, a boy with black hair and black eyes that Jace knew from school. Sebastian Verlac, on the football team, and something about seeing them together made his fists clench. She smiled at Jace as he passed her, but he ignored it. A flash of hurt crossed her face, and she just turned back to Sebastian.

Another month passed, and every day after school Sebastian rode he bus home with her. Jace and the girl stopped falling into step, because Sebastian was always there. He never sat with her at lunch- Jace knew that for a fact- but every day after school they were together. She stopped smiling at him, and although she talked just as animatedly as usual to Sebastian, but her eyes had stopped being as bright. She started wearing darker, thicker clothes, even in the warmer weather.

Jace started bringing girls home too- different every week, and he knew that she noticed. But it didn't matter anymore; she didn't matter. He had his own problems, he didn't need to overanalyse the way Sebastian gripped her arm as they walked home, how he cut off her excited chart with harsh kisses. Jace always looked away when that happened.

Days stretched into weeks, and before he knew it he was sixteen, then seventeen. He learned that the girls name was Clary; Sebastian gossiped about her in the locker room. It made his ears turn red and stomach churn when he talked about her, but he laughed along with the rest of the guys as he told his sordid stories.

Then, one morning, Clary climbed onto the bus with a busted lip and a trail of bruises along her neck- Jace saw red. He was seventeen, he was tall and broad, and he was only just able to push his step father off him when he let out his abuse. She was sixteen, but she was so small, so pure. And someone had hit her.

He caught up with her as she climbed off of the bus to school, and reached out to pull her into an alcove beside the school. She had squirmed from his grasp and turned to face him, dull eyes narrow and angry.

"What the hell." She blurted out, and Jace crossed his arms.

"What happened to your face." He said, ignoring the flutter of her hand to her face.

"Nothing happened. I fell." She said carefully, avoiding his eyes. He scoffed harshly.

"And I'm a nun. Just tell me one thing; was it Verlac?"

The way she clenched up was answer enough, and Jace pushed past her and began to scan the crowd for him, he had his eyes locked on someone with black hair, eyes narrowing, but he has been stopped from going after him by soft hands. He spun around to meet those green eyes again.

"Don't you dare, Jace Herondale. This is none of your business." Her voice was shaking, so were her hands as she gripped his bicep. He kept his breath even so as not to flinch away, and looked straight into her eyes.

"It's everyone's business if you walk around with your face all messed up."

He pulled his arm away and stalked off, Clary wrapping her arms around herself as he left. That lunch time, in the middle of the cafeteria, Jace punched Sebastian in the face. And gut. And the chest.

It was the angriest he had been in a long time, and as he found himself locked in a brawl with one of the strongest guys in school, he rest of the student body cheering around him, he felt alive.

That is until a small red head pushed herself into the fight and threw herself in front of Jace, getting hit in the process. She didn't back down.

"Stop being stupid!" She yelled at them both- the first time many people had heard her raise her voice. Sebastian said something crude to her, and Jace stepped up to hit him again when Clary pulled him away as hard as she could. She was tugging his arm, pulling him away from the fight, and she let him. She pulled him into a girls bathroom, locking the door behind her.

"Red, this is the girl's bathroom." He said sarcastically. "Did you just want to get me alone?"

Clary wet a paper towel and moved to his face, pushing in a cut above his eyebrow that he hadn't even noticed.

"Shit." He hissed.

"Shut up." She said bitterly; he raised his split eyebrow in scrutiny. "Just... Shut up. Why the hell did you do that? Why..." She trailed off, looking into his golden eyes. She had never talked to him before. "Why did you do that?"

He sighed.

"I'm not gonna let that bastard hurt you again." Clary scoffed that time.

"What do you care Jace... We aren't friends." Jace closed his eyes as her soft hands cleaned up his face.

"You used to smile at me." He started.

"What do you mean?"

"On the bus, you used to smile at me, and I would pretend I didn't notice when really I did. And now you don't."

She looked livid at that.

"You asshat; I smiled at you every day and you never looked back. You ignored me like I was invisible."

Clary let out a breath, and Jace felt the warm, minty breath float over his face. She was so small.

"I would still smile. If you wanted me to." She muttered, and Jace grinned.

And just like that, the girl on the bust wasn't just the girl on the bus. She was Clary, Jace's best friend. He found out that the scribbles in her pad at lunchtime were beautiful, intricate sketches of people he knew. Of him.

She had blushed when he noticed them, but he just handed her an earphone, hiding his flushed ears under his growing hair. She made him look beautiful.

She was the first person to notice the bruises on his wrists, on his arms. It was her artists eye, she had said sarcastically as they argued. That's why she noticed. That's also the reason that she brought him home to her house that night, saying that there was no way he was going back.

"You saved me, remember?" She whispered as they lay next to each other on her bed. "Now I'm saving you."

Clary's Dad wasn't around anymore, and Jocelyn loved Jace- he was an angel compared to Sebastian- so she had no problem with him hanging around in the spare room until he turned eighteen. And when he did, he used the money that he saved from working at Taki's to rent a room above the restaurant.

And the day he moved in, the day that Clary moved his final box into that tiny apartment, that was the day that he told Clary he loved her.

"Jace." She had whispered carefully as he stared into her emerald eyes, counting the freckles along her nose.

"Don't say stuff you don't mean."

Jace just leant in and captured her lips with her own, pulling her toward him tightly. He felt her soft hands wind over his neck; her lips soft and sweet as he deepened the kiss. He pulled away and her eyes fluttered open.

"I mean it Clary. I'm crazy about you." She sucked in a breath.

"I love you, Jace Herondale. So damn much." Clary whispered before pulling him back in for a kiss.

And after that, everything was good. A happy ending; one neither of them thought they would ever get: Jace got accepted to NYU on a full scholarship, Clary following a year later, eventually graduating top of her class with a position teaching art waiting for her.

And that brought them back, back to the bus they met on. Clary, with a bag slung on her back, tears in her eyes as she headed toward her new home with Jace, away from her childhood home. That brought them to the seats at the back of the bus where Jace had always sat watching her, where they had met.

Her hair was longer than ever, Jace noticed, remembering the first time he saw the flame haired girl darting across the bus. He turned to his girlfriend, wiping the tear that fell down her chin with her thumb.

"Hey." He whispered. "I love you. Everything is going to be good now. This is us, right? This is the start." She nodded quickly, kissing him softly in the lips.

"Of course. Of course it is- I love you, too." She said quickly. Jace breathed a sigh of relief, hands shaking as the bus stopped.

"Good. Because, I've got to tell you Clary- I haven't loved anyone like I love you. Ever. You saved me, over and over; every time you smiled at me it gave me hope. So, I love you, I can't even say it enough, and I want to be with you forever."

With that he dropped to one knee, careful to be quick before the bus started moving or the people staring began to clamber last him. Clary's eyes were wider than ever as he fumbled with a ring box, opening it to show her the simple gold band that her mother had helped him pick.

"Clary Fray; the girl on the bus." She grinned at that, tears spilling slowly.

"Will you marry me?" There was a gasp somewhere behind him, and Jace kept ignoring it as the girl in front of him reached for the ring.

"Of course, you softy. Of course I'll marry you." Jace used his shaking fingers to push the ring onto her slender finger, before she threw her arms around him, nearly knocking them both onto the ground as the bus lurched off. There was a cheer in the background, a lot of clapping, but Jace didn't care. He kissed his fiancée, it being just as electric as the first time.

He was just a boy on the bus again, and she was just a girl. But this time, she was his girl. And he liked the sound of that.

THE END.


End file.
